the class-o-matic

Clearly influenced by aviation design, the fenders disappeared into the smooth and rounded Art Deco “beetle” body of the Scarab and its airy interior featured movable chairs and a varnished wicker headliner. At the time, there was nothing else like the Scarab, and it was sold by invitation to people of means. Only six to nine were made.















" The Stout Scarab was conceived by one William Stout, the man who gave us
the first all-metal plane and devised the first regularly scheduled passenger air
service which, in 1929, became United Air Lines. The Scarab was his idea of what
a car should be: a sort of aircraft fuselage on wheels. It was powered by a rear-
mounted Ford V8 engine placed above the rear axle and feeding its power to the
clutch and then down via a chain to the gearbox and differential. For suspension
it used something that looked very much like an early form of MacPherson strut
(not used on a production car until the '50s).
















Essentially the Scarab was the first people-carrier, its spaceframe construction body offering double the interior space of a Ford V8 in a shell that was only marginally longer. You could throw a party inside one of these cars. The long wheelbase gave a superb ride and, despite the extreme rearward position of the engine, the handling was undramatic. It was light, too, so the big Ford V8 was understressed. Nine were built including the original prototype, plus a single final glassfibre example - not only the world's first glassfibre car but a monocoque, too, built up out of only eight separate pieces and featuring air suspension."